The Force - Velocity Curve

Training for performance is not what most players do in the gym.

I'd say 80 - 90% of players train to increase muscle size with the other 10 - 20% training for strength.

So 1 of those options is an actual strength quality (strength) and the other is a by product of a particular type of training.

My suggestion is to work off the force velocity curve:

As you can see from the image above one axis is force and the other is velocity so they are at opposite ends of the spectrum essentially.

Getting back to my opening statements, most players seem to think that training for hypertrophy and/or strength will automatically increase speed which is partly true as strength would be represented here as the force part of the equation.

Unfortunately the velocity part is often neglected.

To simplify:

Force refers to the highest load you can move regardless of time (think of a slow 1 rep max attempt) and velocity is the speed at which you can move a given force/load (think throwing a punch in boxing).

In regards to footy, you'll be doing it hard in the gym to hopefully increase sprinting speed (the difference between professional and amateur footballers) followed by full body strength for strength over the ball and hypertrophy for armor to protect against collisions as well as for injury prevention.